We know the self is constructed because it can be so easily deconstructed — through damage, disease, and drugs. It must be an emergent property of a parallel system processing input, output, and internal representations. It’s an illusion because it feels so real, but that experience is not what it seems. The same is true for free will.

Although we can experience the mental anguish of making a decision… the choices and decisions we make are based on situations that impose on us. We don’t have the free will to choose the experiences that have shaped our decisions.

Buddhism Without Buddhism: a resolutely irreligious Buddhism; a Buddhism that is rooted in human meanings rather than in fantasies of the sacred; a Buddhism that is pervaded by a thoroughgoing this-wordliness: it is, perhaps, an impossible thing to hope for. But at the same time, I find the idea extraordinarily attractive, it has become a touch-stone for how I think about Buddhism. But with a question mark at the end, just for good measure.